This invention is in the field of systems and methods for delivering interactive applications to resource constrained devices that are capable of displaying video such as digital television set-top boxes, mobile phones or other video capable devices. This invention enables new ways to deliver the user interface for interactive application.
A very large number of today's digital video set-top boxes are limited by their inability to display graphically rich and dynamic user interfaces for interactive applications, such as interactive program guides. This limitation is due to the poor graphics display capabilities that most set-top boxes exhibit, as well as the broadcast carousel-based delivery mechanism for graphics utilized in application user interfaces (UI).
The typical on-screen display (OSD) for a low-end set-top box supports only low resolution graphics with very limited number of displayable colors.
In addition, the performance of set-top box-based graphically rich applications which leverage broadcast data carousels, for example, a Digital Storage Media Command and Control (DSMCC) carousel, for graphics delivery is inversely proportional to the amount of graphics material utilized by the user interface of an application. In other words, the more user interface graphics that are utilized by the application, the slower the access time is for those graphics due to the cyclical nature of the broadcast carousel delivery mechanism for the graphics which causes the application to wait for the needed graphic until it is repeated again in the carousel. Consequently, this causes a noticeably slow response time for the application when a remote control key is pressed that leads to an graphical update of the application's user interface.
These set-top limitations combined with recent feature additions to video-on-demand servers present an opportunity to significantly enhance the user interfaces of program guide applications and other types of interactive applications.
In recent years, video service providers (for example, cable companies) have made a great investment in the build-out of video-on-demand (VOD) infrastructure. Whether it be network-based VOD servers or set-top box based digital video recorders (DVRs), the infrastructure is in place to deliver what people want to see, when they want to see it. These VOD servers are also capable of splicing together various streams of video to provide a seamless viewing experience—a feature primarily driven by the business of ad-insertion, but also useful in the invention which is about to be described.
Accordingly, what is needed and heretofore unavailable is a system and method for displaying graphically rich and dynamic user interfaces for interactive program guides and interactive applications on resource constrained video display devices such as digital video set-top boxes or mobile phones.